azaadi aur patange....

....so the independence day is here round the corner and purani dilli is coming back to life....with shops of kite sellers coming up from hauz qazi to farash khana...its a colourful mayhem these days......colorful kites of various sizes and motifs.....with the special maanja and dhaaga.....people suddenly opening shops as puraane bareliwale....to increase the value of kites.....the activity will gradually increase with the 15th August approaching.....and now with the metro connecting the Shahjahanabad with the rest of the city, the business is going to be brisk.....people throng the purani dilli to buy kites...searching market all through the day for good bargains and deals....finally buying a good amount of kites and maanja.....and culminating the trip to purani dilli with nice delicasies.....it has always been like that.....we had a huge house....and its terrace used to be turned into a colourful chirpy battleground on 15th August....when people would wake up from the slumber and will gradually start flying kites....then would follow the paich....the fight across the other roof to cut each others kite.....and then the running behind the kite cut in the fight......oh what fun.....the victory of some kind.....by evening the whole sky would be filled with all kind of kites....the bollywood ones, the patriotic ones, the glitzy ones......the day would be incomplete for we purani dilliwalahs if good food is not prepared....after all the happiness is incomplete without a sumptous meal....so ammi and tai ammi would prepare some nice delicacies....biryani...keema...paranthe....n it would be served there on the terrace with all the bonhomie.....like a picnic....gurls were not behind when it came to flying kites....thats the beauty of a joint family.....you are never under estimated by anybody....and are always given equal rights.....so our bhai would rise the kite for us and would give that to us to fly....everyone knew that ultimately it would get cut by some nasty neighbour....but still the fun and laughter attached with it would stay with us for a long time......the way it has stayed all these years with me.....just hoping to fly some these years also with younger kids of the family....and offcourse the sumptous yummy meal is always welcome.....long live the spirit of independence.....meri dilli.....

The mistress of every conqueor

came across something very beautiful about Delhi..written by Perceval Landon..in 1906....Delhi, the mistress of every conqueror of India, Aryan or Afghan, persian, english or moghul, remains unconquered still. over twenty square miles of sun baked plain lie out the debris of her many pasts, relics of her dead and gone masters, some perfect still, some once more crumbling back into the levels of red-yellow marl that have alternately fed and housed, and fed and housed again forgotten generations of men. Yet Delhi lives. Like some huge crustacean, she has shed behind her own outgrown habitations, as she has crawled northwards from Tughlaqabad and Lalkot, through Dinpanah and Ferozabad, till the long, red lizard of the Ridge barred her way, and now she suns herself, a raffle of narrow and congested byways, beneath the crimson walls of ShahJehan's great palacefort. But Delhi is more than her streets and temples.....awesome.....truly awesome....very poetic....

...naye dost...

ammi got me a pet today....probably she feels i need one to relieve the stress in day to day life....the pet is unique and lovable in so many ways....its a pair of small little parrots...a male and a female....female is yellow and i call her piloo...the male is green...but i really dont care to call it anything....i like piloo more....m biased...but piloo looks and behaves like me...i instantly developed a liking for her.....
..its not the first time ammi got me a pet....it has always been a summer vacation exercise during my childhood days....we bachcha party would pool in money and would bring small chicks as pets, or little colorful birds from kabootar market at jama masjid, or pigeons.....fishes....small tortoise....a small very young goat..which abbaji would make sure that its nicely fed....and our mohalla billi never kept us lonely...every few months she used to give kittens....so the house always had a lot of activity to keep us busy......the chicks..rather chooze...has lot of memories...many times they were coloured....and almost everytime their end was sad....the devil bilaao..the dada of mohalla cat society would someday find the chicks alone and would eat them...leaving us sad for few days....there would be so many reasons ammi and taiammi would give to have pets in family....logical as well as illogical....as in they ward off the evil types....but the only one i believe is true is that pets fill our life.....we human beings always have a desire to be needed and feel love..and give that in return....and that way we feel happy....piloo has bought back the vivid beautiful memories of childhood.....m sure now its gonna b a beautiful time....

...nani ka ghar....

today suddenly m missing my nani ka ghar more, its memories are always there....the ghar cant jst get out from the soul....its there always....bt today i m missing it more...its huge sahn..where we have played all through our childhood....a dozen children of the house running, cycling...this sahn has seen all the seasons, festivals, marriages and deaths....sahn been an integral part of the household....a flexible space...which turned into a full fledged dhobi ghat in morning...a full spillover space of the kitchen during meal preparing times, an offcourse how can it be complete without the khat pat of utensils and the spicy gossips of mumanis....they added the zing to the whole thing...come afternoon,....time for us the noisemakers to come bk from school..the sahn would turn into a platform of some railway station....one after the other the huge door would be opened and banged....complete with a loud salaam...so that the whole house wud know who has come...n suddnely nana would shout from his place....aree aram se darwaza band kiya ker....hazaar martaba samjhaya hai....n this wud happen everyday....afternoon siesta time, n our sahn wud be our playground....till evening we wud play....the huge haveli it was....complete with dalan and dar dalan....those beautiful cusped arches and the chajja over them...today how i wish that they should not have sold the haveli....but then...thats how the life is...but even today...while passing even in front of the nani ki gali....i feel a pang somewhere..the biggest house of the mohalla...sold...why......i miss my nanis home...

Delhi 6

..watched Delhi6 recently...n found it utter nonsense...probably i had gone with very high expectations, the promos were strong enough to take me to the theatre...good cinematography, angles, frames...dats it....it had everything except a good story or something which could really show the culture...i cudnt relate much except at few points.....masakkali....i have seen a neighbour doing kabootarbaazi since the day i could understand the language and make sense of the things...his son do it today....the jalebiwala and the theatrics of telling an incident to the mohalla group.....the visiting of the whole khaandan and acquintances to some patient in a hospital, no matter how big or small the ailment....the gossiping of the females across the walls, through niches and courtyards..and most of the time spreading all wrong info....that is it....i wish there would have been more to the movie....it left so much, didnt do justice i feel.....so many people would have gone to watch it to catch a good glimpse of the labyrinthine city....

..traffic jams...

purani dilli n its traffic jams goes a long way together. the city which had only the pedestrian movement for its general public and beautiful paalkis for the rich delicate things, horses and such sawaris for the nobles during the time of its inception...today has all kinds of vehicles meandering through its narrow lanes...bumping into each other..hitting, honking...the situation has worsened with the large scale commercial establishments and shops....almost every important lane is laced with some kind of specialized market...harware, books, paper, cards, industrial machines, spices, grains..you think of it and its there....and with trade comes its paraphernaria....thelas, scooters, pullers, loaders, hawkers...everyone contributing to the madness...and the authorities only seem more confused and come out with equally funny proposals....
you sit in a rickshaw with your mom, trying to hold the shopping bags properly on one side, and the rickshaw on the other, lest you will roll down the rickshaw the moment the cycle rickshaw wala tries to stop his vehicle, coz the only way he knows how to stop it is hit the tricycle standing in the row in front of him...n suddenly someone goes bazooka jst next to you, as if driving on the national highway, honking with all the energy ( probably he himself has gone deaf with it)....and there he hits an old lady in burkha or may b a sari....n there goes the typical line.....kambakhat kahin ke, andhe ho gaye hain, allah bhala kare in namuraadon ka.....n you end up laughing only....thats the most beautiful aspect of all this chaos...theres a sense of life even in this meandering chaotic never ending line of rickshaws...

...another dream came to an end.....

one more dream..one more bright sunny hope..turned into a dark ashed reality....why it always end like this i wished to know from my Almighty....bt then realized that the Almighty is busy with the world's problems....n m such an insignificant thing that he doesnt probably see me.......all dat pain, anger, frustrations and the hatred of not doing enough for achieving my ambition...
all dat hopelessness which has unknowingly creeped in somewhere in this always positive person...n how i have gradually closed all doors on myself.....but this is not how i am....i have always risen from my own ashes, literally, so how can i end like this..
....picture abhi baaqi hai.....i ll not let my dreams die like this...it has to be a reality and very soon....n this Almighty knows that I am smart enough to handle my pains and anger and defeats....n i ll turn them into victories again smday with my people around me, giving me the hope and energy to fight it out...with my City's never say Die spirit and be INDOMITABLE......